"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."
— Frederick Douglass
Where Justice Is Denied Where Poverty
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
About this quote
Douglass delivered this line in a speech at the twenty-fourth anniversary of Emancipation in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 1886. Speaking to an audience that included formerly enslaved people and their descendants, he argued that social stability depends on justice: when entire classes of people are systematically oppressed, the resulting grievances make property and persons unsafe for everyone. The speech came during the height of Reconstruction's reversal and the rise of Jim Crow laws.
Source
Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of Emancipation, Washington, D.C., April 1886
